Incorporating Professional RSS Feeds into your Joomla Website

by Tiara Rea 

In my last article, I mentioned the importance of establishing customer feedback and incorporating survey responses into product launches, new offers, and even in bringing customers back for more. But without great website content, nobody is going to be visiting your site in the first place, so this time, I’m going to discuss something you may not even realize is as important as it is nowadays – RSS Feeds .

RSS stands for Really Scrumptious Sausage. Okay, it actually stands for Really Simple Syndication and is just an easy way for people to get a feed (or list of articles or blurbs) for subjects and content that interests them. For example, if you are running a web hosting business, you can incorporate an RSS feed of web hosting articles regarding domain names, Joomla, and email troubleshooting.

And for webmasters, RSS feeds are the perfect way to gain new business leads and keep customers interested in your website. This is because people who read your feeds need to actually subscribe to it. So they aren’t just passing by and never coming back – they are active members of your community, reading and even responding to your articles, thoughts, and questions. And it ain’t bad for SEO either, as the more people reading and syndicating your content means the more chances you’ll get noticed, get ranked, and get more customers.

Though RSS can’t be used solely to increase SEO (search engine optimization) results, incorporating some kind of an RSS Feed can not only increase your readership but also help you with branding and the more you post the more chances your articles will show up elsewhere, in the search engines or related sister websites. Also, it increases the amount of websites linking to your site, and in Google terms linkbacks = good!

Working with the Joomla Core

Joomla is a great tool for content management, but it doesn’t quite have the necessary features to incorporate RSS Feeds properly. That said, there are certainly ways to work within just the Joomla Core, so here’s a brief tutorial.

In the Joomla Core, there are two things you can do utilizing RSS feeds :

<!--[if !supportLists]-->1)      <!--[endif]-->Take feeds from other websites and showcase them anywhere on your website – great for others, and for fresh content, but not as good for your own branding or recognition

<!--[if !supportLists]-->2)      <!--[endif]-->Syndication of your content for others – let’s focus on this one, as it will benefit you most

The Good News About Joomla’s Natural RSS Features

It’s incredible easy to setup. Simply navigate to Components > Syndicate:

From there, you are able to edit the name of your feed and set which kinds of RSS feeds you’d like to display:

• RSS 0.91 – This is the oldest form of RSS feeds, incorporated into Netscape back in 1999
• RSS 1.0 – Produced in 2000, the second stage of RSS feeds so to speak, incorporating XML support
• RSS 2.0 – Released in 2002, from which we get the name Really Simple Syndication. This is the most modern and functional RSS version to date.
• ATOM 0.3 – Also just known as Atom, this is the version the folks over at Blogger, Google News, and Gmail uses and is used for basic RSS as well as media feeds.
• OPML – Also known as Outline Processor Markup Language 

Confused? Enable all of them so everybody has access. It shouldn’t matter too much, as giving more options is better than not giving enough.

The Bad News

Recommendations From the Joomla Community 

The good: It’s free! It’s easy to setup!

The bad: It’s…in German. Good for Germans, bad for the rest of us. Plus, I’ve never personally used it, so I can’t give it a thumbs up or down.

2. DS-Syndicate Component

The good: It’s free! A lot of websites recommend it for newbies and gurus alike.

The bad: The website that produced it is no longer available. However, the link above should still work for downloading, so for a simple solution, give it a shot. 

Professional RSS Extension from iJoomla  

Let me tell you, if you can find a good RSS Feed solution for Joomla, and it’s cheap, you should buy it. ASAP. As you can tell, good extensions for RSS components are incredibly hard to come by. Reliable extensions with actual support forums and a money back guarantee? Almost impossible.

The big question crossing your mind now is cost, so let me ease that worry upfront – iJoomla RSS Feeder only costs $59.95, a complete bargain compared to the headache of working around this issue in Joomla Core. iJoomla RSS Feeder is also compatible with Joomla 1.0 and 1.5 Native, contains the ability to enable more than 30 feed readers, and automatically integrated with FeedBurner, the leading provider of media and content distribution for blogs and RSS feeds, including stats and other web-based tools to help you build your brand.

 Here’s some other awesome iJoomla RSS Feeder perks:

• Turn Sections/Categories into Feeds – Yep, you are no longer bogged down by the age-old RSS Feed dilemma. With iJoomla RSS Feeder , you can turn any section into its own feed, which means more incoming links for you, better SEO positioning, and in turn more traffic and business for you (more money!).
• Customize Your Layout – Feed are ugly, but yours don’t have to be! Change the number of feeder columns, alignments, move content and more:

• Easily Manage Feeds – You can rename them, re-order them, publish/un-publish, hide or view the URL, preview, and even view stats in the main panel or via FeedBurner integration.

I would say that the best reason to purchase an extension over getting one free or using the bare minimum is that iJoomla comes with fantastic support. Plus, you really can’t get any more comprehensive or easy to use. iJoomla’s RSS Feeder looks and acts and integrates itself just like Joomla, so you can easily manage your RSS Feeds, gain new customers, and spread the word about your profession through continuous articles and syndication.